The Factories are Closed A Dark and Uniform Red
by gloryblastit
Summary: It's about Johnny's father as a teenager, maybe he had it rough at home, too.
1. Default Chapter

It was 1945. The war ended. But Johnny's father, who was 15, didn't really care. His father had been back already for two years.  
Actually, the three years he was away was like a vacation. His mother worked in a factory and he didn't have to come home to all the yelling and fighting he'd always known. It was nice.  
But then the old man came home and life continued as it had been. He had to plan things around his father's drinking and his father's moods. His mother left the factory and left the new friends she'd made and came back to living under his father's thumb.  
Everyone was rich now. The war was over and everyone had the new appliances and Henry Ford cars. Not them. They had a small house on the poor side of Tulsa.  
His mother's eyes were sad. Once, after his dad came home, his mother sat at the kitchen table as the moon rose higher and higher in the sky. Cooling, undrunk tea in front of her. She was waiting for his father. Johnny's dad knew he was at a bar.  
"Mum, why don't you get a job in a factory again? We can move," Johnny's dad said this, looking at the finger print bruises on her arm, the cuts on her face.  
She shook her head slowly and she looked so old to him.  
"The factories are closed," she said, and the words were hollow. He wished his dad had died in the war and knew he'd go to hell for wishing it.  
He liked a girl at school. She had long black hair and big dark eyes. She smiled at him and he'd duck his head, turn away.  
He wanted to marry her and move out of his house.  
His mother walked around the house with zombie eyes, the bruises were all he could see. His father would bellow his name and he'd cringe. At school his teachers screamed at him, "Cade!" and whatever it was they were going to ask he wouldn't know the answer. They'd crack his knuckles with their wooden rulers. The only good thing in his life was that girl, she was so pretty and nice, nice to him. He wanted her to be Mrs.Cade.  
He didn't have to do anything for his father to yell and hit and punch. It seemed to him it just came out of nowhere.  
He'd started not coming home all the time. He knew his mother waited for him with worry in her eyes. He just couldn't always bear to be at home. He'd stay outside in a field, at friend's houses, pool halls.  
Drinking seemed to help. Beer went down smooth and easy and he made sense again, his life didn't hurt him as much. The constant knot in his chest loosened and he could breathe with a drink in his hand.  
No wonder his father drank.  
He caught him once.  
"What in the hell do you think you're doing?" His father's voice, the voice of doom. He felt cold.  
"Nuh, nothin'"  
"You lying little shit!"  
And his father's belt came out of the loops so fast. The belt with the heavy buckle. He could barely sit for a week and learned to hide his drinking better than that.  
It helped school, too. Then he didn't feel so stupid, or he just didn't care.  
His mother may have noticed but said nothing. She hardly spoke since his father returned from the war. He remembered how much she had talked and laughed when he was away.  
At school with a black eye he felt so stupid. He could hardly see out of it. The white part was a dark and uniform red. His iris seemed to float on top. It scared him to see it in the mirror.  
"Oh, honey, what happened?" The girl with the black hair said. She reached out with one finger to touch the edge of the black and blue. He tried not to wince.  
"My old man,"  
They were skipping school. He liked that. The afternoon off. Smoking cigarettes, watching the sun pick up dark red highlights in the girl's black hair. He wanted to skip school, skip home, skip his life.  
She leaned towards him and he kissed her, felt her soft tongue in his mouth, his hand on the back of her neck.  
"I love you," she said. He was happy then.  
He went home hoping his mother was there and his father was not.  
"You little piece of shit," his father greeted him and he could smell the gin, juniper berries, sickly sweet. His eyes went round and he thought of running. But he'd ran before and always got caught. Then things were worse.  
"You skipped school, you little shit," He couldn't breathe, stood frozen in the kitchen. He felt the pounding of his heart in his ears, pounding of blood. Shit. 'Please,' he prayed to everyone and no one. His father stood up knocking the chair to the floor. The clatter of it echoed around his brain. The belt was in his father's hand in one fluid, swift movement.  
He backed up away from his father and that belt, the thick leather clenched in his thick fist.  
He felt hatred like an alive thing chewing at his nerve endings and wished again his father had died a hero in Europe under the German's crooked cross.  
His palms were flat against the kitchen wall and he wondered wildly where his mother was and saw the flourescent light reflected in the silver buckle.  
His father lifted the belt high and it arched down through the air and landed on his shoulder. He bit through his bottom lip trying not to cry out and thought, 'I'll never do this to my kid,'. 


	2. ch2

He didn't even notice when his father left, but he must have. The whippings with the belt had stopped, but it took him a while to realize that.

"Oh, Ricky," It was his mom's sad voice, and she had a cool cloth against his face.

He was still on the kitchen floor and everything hurt.

"C'mon, Ricky, honey. C'mon," His mom helped him up. Held onto his waist as she helped him get to the couch. He laid down, the ratty old couch felt so soft after the kitchen floor.

He wanted to tell his mother he hated his father and he was leaving, but the words stuck in his throat, and tears coursed down his cheeks. When his mom took the cloth away from his face it was bloody.

He groaned and rolled over, away from his mother, away from everything. He wanted to leave but he didn't have the energy. All he could do was lay there.

He didn't go to school the next day but the school didn't give a shit. He was a fuck up there anyway.

Days later, bruises started to heal, he'd gone back to school. The teachers either ignored him or figured he got what he deserved.

The only one who looked at him with any degree of softness was the girl with the black hair and big dark eyes, Maryann.

"Oh Ricky, Jesus Christ…" She trailed it off, hovered her hand near the dark bruises, the cuts. He jerked away from her. He didn't mean to but he couldn't help it. She reached out her hand again but slow, touched his hair. He let her.

"Hey, let's get married," he said, and her eyes widened at the desperateness in his tone. But she laughed, nervous, tinkly laughter.

"No," he said, tilting her chin up with the ball of his thumb, "I'm serious,"

"Ricky, God, are you crazy? Get married at 15?" There was a type of laughing in her voice that made him mad, just for a second. Like he wanted to hit her. He felt his hand curling into a fist.

"Forget it," he said, jumped up, ran. He knew she stared after him, knew how pretty she looked with her eyes wide like that, so dark they looked black, he loved her, loved everything about her, how could he want to hit her?

He ran until the air tore through his lungs, dry and gritty. His ribs hurt. His head hurt. He saw a little dog along the side of the road, one of those mangy junk yard dogs, sniffing for scraps. He lifted his foot up and kicked that dog square in the ribs, felt a vicious satisfaction when it whelped and he kicked it again. It ran off, yelping and whimpering, and the vicious feeling turned to a cold regret. Ricky squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his hands against his temples, doubled over and tried not to puke.

What the hell was wrong with him? He shuddered and looked back toward Maryann. He'd run too far, couldn't see her at all.

Good lord he needed a drink.

After awhile he headed slowly toward a bar he knew didn't give two shits about how old he was. He drank, from the golden top to the clear glass bottom of beer after beer, and the beer blurred everything to a tolerable level. He could almost stand to be in his own skin.

"Ricky?" Maryann had found him here. Her eyes looked shiny like she'd been crying.

"Oh…hey, hi," He knew he sounded drunk. Everything felt blurry and just out of reach.

"I'm, um, I'm sorry," she said, sliding onto the barstool next to him. He looked at her, her hair as black as a gun, she was so pretty. Her apology confused him, he had thought he was wrong.

"It's a, I guess it's okay," he said, trying to say each word right, without the drunken slur.

"Hey, have a drink," he said, and ordered her one. She smiled as the yellow beer was brought before her. She had a ways to go to catch up to him, but she thought she could. She knew she could.


	3. ch3

"What about your parents?" Ricky whispered to her as they stumbled toward her house.

"It's okay. It's just my mom, she's probably not even home,"

After that last beating he'd be damned if he'd go back home. Maybe his mom worried and maybe not. It didn't matter anymore.

Everything looked a little blurry around the edges, the only thing that was clear was Maryann. She was sharp, stark relief.

She took his hand and led him into the dark house and they fell on the couch, laughing.

"Where's your mom?" he said.

"I don't know. Out," There was something forbidding in her tone so he let it go, thought again of his own mother worrying about him. Well, he thought angrily, she shouldn't worry. He was safer anywhere else than home.

He kissed Maryann, pushed her back into the couch, liked how soft her kisses were, how smooth her hair was beneath his fingers.

He wanted to get married, leave his stupid house and have a happy life.

x………………x……………….x……………………….x

They were asleep on the couch when dawn cracked the sky, gold lines here and there through the gray sky, and her mother came home.

Ricky felt fear crash into his body, a shot of adrenaline. He looked at her mother with wide eyes. But she walked right by and into the kitchen, the stench of whiskey and cigarette smoke clinging to her long coat and her hair.

He heard her clanging and banging around the kitchen, getting coffee or maybe a glass of water to go with the headache.

Maryann slept, her breathing smooth and even. She was beautiful, Ricky thought. She was always tan, like a Gypsy or an Indian, and he wished he could kiss her again.

"Hey," Her mother had re entered the room and leveled him with a stare. He squirmed uncomfortably under her gaze.

"Listen," she said, sounding bored, sounding like her mind was on a million other things rather than him.

"You've got to go,"

Maryann didn't stir and Ricky shrugged, got up, found his shoes, and slipped out the door.

He wasn't going to go home. Never again. It was a vow. That beating had been the last.

It was quiet, the city still asleep. The sky was gold. He liked to be up at this time, awake and alone. He could think when it was like this, when people weren't at him, parents and teachers pulling on him, never giving him peace.

Past the diner where the old men drank their coffee and smoked, past the railroad tracks, past all the streets with small wooden houses and scrub grass, he was aimless, no where to go.

Maybe he'd quit school, get a job, knock Maryann up so she'd have to marry him, get out of his shitty life, escape, escape.

"Hey, kid, spare a quarter?" It was a bum, the man's age disguised by his tattered clothes and dirty face, rotting teeth.

"Naw, I ain't got any money," Ricky said, and the man glared at him.

"Fucking liar," and with that the bum spat on the ground, narrowly missing the top of Ricky's sneaker.

"Look, man, why would I lie? Why should I give you money anyways?" He glared back, gritted his teeth, eyes narrowed. He spread his feet apart in a fighting stance. If this guy pissed him off anymore he'd punch him, he swore he would.


End file.
